Recent intelligence released by Israel and the United States (US), originally reported by The New York Times (NYT), claims that Iran was behind a recent ploy to attack the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) embassy in Ethiopia. In addition, the report suggested that Iran had also activated “sleeper cells” in Addis Ababa in late 2020 to gain more intelligence on American and Israeli embassies.
Earlier this month, Ethiopian authorities seized weapons and explosives and arrested 15 individuals in connection with the now-foiled attack against the UAE embassy. The group was linked to Iran after their ring leader, Ahmed Ismail, was arrested in Sweden. “The group took the mission from a foreign terrorist group and was preparing to inflict significant damage on properties and human lives,” the Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) reported. The EPA also said that another group was planning to attack the UAE’s mission in Khartoum, Sudan, which was confirmed by a Sudanese official.
Rear Admiral Heidi K. Berg, the director of intelligence at the Pentagon’s Africa Command, confirmed that Sweden and Ethiopia had “collaborated on the disruption to the plot”. Iran, however, has denied the NYT report, with the spokesperson for the Iranian Embassy in Addis Ababa dismissing the allegations as “baseless” and “provoked by the Zionist regime’s malicious media.”
According to reports, the ploy was part of the larger aim to revenge the killings of the former Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the US and Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Iran alleges was killed by Israel. Soleimani was widely recognised as the head of Iran’s expanding ambitions in the Middle East. Under his watch, Iran conducted proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Washington had accused Soleimani of being the mastermind behind attacks on US forces in the region and executed the commander through a drone strike. Following the incident, Iran retaliated by launching ballistic missiles on US airbases in Iraq. Similarly, Fakhrizadeh was thought to be a prime target of the Mossad for years, given his leadership of the country’s ‘Amad’ or ‘Hope’ program, which aimed to look into the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon in Iran. Israel has not accepted its involvement in the killing so far. While Iran’s grudges against the US and Israel are clear, the UAE is reportedly being targeted by Iran for having signed the normalisation deal with Israel, which was brokered by the US.
The attacks by Iran in different parts of the world are not new either. In January, an explosion occurred next to the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. Although no injuries were reported, a letter found at the site reportedly warned that “the explosion is just a trailer for what’s coming.” Soon after, a terrorist organization affiliated with Iran called Jaish-ul-Hind claimed responsibility for the explosion. Likewise, last September, Politico revealed that US intelligence had uncovered an Iranian government assassination plot against Washington’s Ambassador to South Africa.
According to Farzin Nadimi, an Iranian armed forces specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the recent attempts to attack foreign diplomats are a message to Washington to reach a nuclear deal with Iran soon or risk dealing with “a dangerous neighbourhood”.
Intelligence Reports Reveal Iranian Ploy to Attack UAE Embassy in Ethiopia
Israeli and the United States officials have disclosed that Iran has been plotting to attack the UAE Embassy in Ethiopia to avenge the killings of Qassem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
February 16, 2021
SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES